One day into the World Swimming Championships and Dmitry Sautin and China's strong diving squad have already staked out places atop the medals podium.

Lao Lishi and Li Ting captured gold in the women's 10-meter synchronized diving, while Sautin and Russian teammate Alexander Dobroskok won the 3-meter springboard with 369.18 points to top silver medalists Wang Tianling and Wang Feng of China (343.29 points) in sweltering heat at Barcelona's Montjuic Swimming Pool, where Sautin captured a bronze in the 1992 Olympics.

Russia led with two golds, followed by one each for China and Italy after Sunday's action.

Another diving medal will be handed out Monday in the women's 1-meter springboard. Eight water polo preliminaries are also scheduled for Day 2.

Dobroskok and Sautin improved on their bronze-medal performance in the 3-meter springboard from the 2001 worlds in Fukuoka, Japan.

"In the preliminaries we were a little nervous but in the afternoon we were better," the 29-year-old Sautin said. "There was serious competition and it wasn't easy winning."

Sautin, who now has seven Olympic and world titles, said he was especially happy with the victory after suffering a left-knee injury earlier this year.

"We weren't thinking about the color of the medals," Wang Tianling said. "We just wanted to do our best."

Lao and Li entered the water out of sync for their fourth dive and were awarded just 67.20 points. But a magnificent 90.78-point final dive clinched China's first medal in a sport where the country's women are expected to dominate.

"We didn't dive as well as we had expected," Lao said. "We were not nervous but the fourth dive was very bad."

Evgueni Kochkarov of Russia and Viola Valli of Italy won the men's and women's 5-kilometer open water swimming titles.

Valli successfully defended her 5-kilometer open water title in Barcelona's harbor to claim the first gold medal of the competition.

In a tight race that saw each of the top eight swimmers finish just a few meters apart after nearly an hour in the water, Valli edged silver medalist Jana Pechanova of the Czech Republic by 2.7 seconds and Germany's Britta Kamrau, who took the bronze, by 5.2 seconds.

"I hadn't seen the course before the race, but I found it fairly simple," said Valli, who won both the 5,000m and 25,000m races at the 2001 worlds in Fukuoka, Japan.

Kochkarov finished the men's race in 53:11.9, two seconds ahead of Germany's Christian Hein and 2.9 seconds before teammate Vladimir Diattchine.

The open water events, which also include the 10,000m and the marathon-like 25,000m, constitute the highest level of distance swimming. International Swimming Federation officials had their attempts to enter open water events for next year's Athens Olympics rejected. 

Editor: Wings